By inaugurating the activities of the New Metropolitan Opera with the creation of an opera entrusted to Airat Ichmouratov, Marc Boucher and the Festival Classica could not better illustrate the need not to put all the metropolitan lyrical eggs in one basket and to sing the ‘opera in another voice looking at it from a different perspective.
Airat Ichmouratov is an old soul in a current creator. In doing so, he embodies something that could be laughed at twice, on the one hand in the era of triumphant communitarianism and tribalism, on the other hand at the end of an era which wanted to see a kind of “progress in the ‘art’ by an increased complexity of musical language, detaching itself from the comprehensibility of music lovers.
Universal and timeless
Find in Victor Hugo, in The man who Laughsmaterial for an opera subject, telling themselves that the listener will make the journey to draw conclusions and update the subject, whereas it is fashionable to adapt films or to draw from the life of some celebrity more or less recent matter to interest the media, here is indeed an attitude of beautiful and great old soul.
We thank Ichmouratov for that, because the repressed sexuality of such a boxer (Champion), the oral skills of a Duchess (Powder Her Face), the breast augmentations of a starlet (Anna-Nicole), the island loves of such an author (Yourcenar) suddenly appear somewhat epiphenomenal compared to the moral and social philosophical issues of Hugo’s text, impeccably and efficiently transformed into an opera libretto by Bertrand Laverdure. Hugo brings back to the carpet here the question of the oppression of the little ones by the rich and the powerful, along with many other considerations, in particular on wealth, appearances, generosity.
Gwynplaine, a mutilated child deliberately disfigured by a gash that makes him look like he is laughing, is in reality an aristocrat. He is taken in, along with Dea, a young blind girl, by Ursus, a traveling theater man. Growing up, Gwynplaine and Dea develop a deep and chaste love. Gwynplaine’s true identity will resurface when he is a young man with a very sharp social conscience.
On the other side, the beautiful Duchess Josiane is drawn to this character she saw on stage, which enrages her suitor, Lord David. Josiane is surrounded by the manipulator Barkilphedro, who will reveal his identity to Gwynplaine and extradite Ursus and Dea. After a scathing plea to the House of Lords (“Silence, peers of England! […] Since you are powerful, be fraternal; since you are great, be gentle. If you knew what I saw! Alas! below, what torment! The human race is in jail. — Victor Hugo), Gwynplaine goes in search of Dea. He will find her exhausted, dying.
Neosynthetism
Musically, Airat Ichmouratov is, as we now know, a neo-romantic. But one could also describe his style as “neosynthetism” as it encompasses a “digesting of the history of the lyrical genre”, which goes from Verdi to Puccini via Prokofiev, Debussy (the way of singing), Offenbach (the atmospheres of traveling theatre, reminiscent of Tales of Hoffmann) and the musical.
He uses this “polystylism” to differentiate the universes: there is a music for the entertainment world and another for the universe of power. His method is clear: he proceeds in sound tables that he installs and on which he grafts the song. And this song, in the great lyrical tradition, includes airs and ensembles.
Ichmouratov serves Fibi, Dea’s friend (Sophie Naubert), particularly well with an irresistible air, but Dea herself (Magali Simard-Galdès) and Josiane (Florence Bourget) are each given a very effective air at the right time. In Barkilphedro, the extremely impressive Jean-François Lapointe has a great air of bravery at the end of Act I. Gwynplaine’s air is set in Act II where, discovering that he is rich but in love with Dea despite Josiane’s advances, Hugo Laporte sings “What’s the point of owning everything if I’m not rich at heart”. As we wrote this text from the general rehearsal (the creation falling at the same time as the closing concert of the OSM), we cannot comment on the vocal performances.
Very well dressed with digital images that relay Hugolian symbolism (the wrecks in the snow at the start, the boats that never weigh anchor at the end), the show deserves revivals elsewhere in Quebec and stage performances when the Nouvel Opéra métropolitain will have all the means for its just and legitimate ambitions.